The Handbook of Discourse Analysis

520 Charlotte Linde
studies is what happens to the structure of narrative (and to the narrators) when one
of the interlocutors is in an institutional position to require other interlocutors to
provide narratives or other discourse forms in an institutionally specified form. Narrative
is a vernacular form, and narratives (and narrators) can get mangled at the
boundaries of powerful institutions.
Agar (1985), indeed, proposes this as the central characteristic of institutional discourse,
which he defines as discourse produced when “one person – a citizen of a
modern nation/state – comes into contact with another – a representative of one of its
institutions” (1985: 147). Looking particularly at medical and legal discourse, he proposes
a three-part framework for institutional discourse, which typically consists of
an interaction – usually a series of question–answer pairs – to diagnose the client,
directives given by an institutional representative either to the client or to the institution,
and a report made by the institutional representative of the diagnosis and
directives.
While Agar does not deal directly with the question of narratives at institutional
boundaries, his account suggests why the production of narratives at these boundaries
is often contested. An important part of the work of the institutional representative
is to use his or her control to fit the client into the organizational ways of
thinking about the problem. As we shall see in the discussion of narrative at institutional
boundaries, the framing of the problem is most frequently the disputed issue
across the boundary. We find these issues in studies of medicine, law, and education.
Frankel (1983) and Todd (1981) demonstrate the conflict between the narrative
form in which patients prefer to offer information about their condition, and the
question–answer form which physicians prefer, since it matches the record which the
physician must construct and the diagnosis tree which they use to determine a condition.
Frankel also finds that production pressure affects medical discourse: physicians
fear that allowing patients to tell their stories will produce an unfocused discourse
which will not provide the needed information within the allotted time. Yet he also
finds a conflict between the physician’s notion of “presenting problem” which is the
focus of diagnosis, and the fact that patients do not always mention the health issue
of greatest concern first in their presentation.
Similarly, there have been a number of studies of legal language which show
tensions between narrative structure and a question–answer format required by institutional
settings. For example, when people on the witness stand try to tell stories,
which by their structure require personal judgment in the evaluation sections, they
are confined by the questions and directions of lawyers and judges to just telling the
facts (Conley and O’Barr 1990; O’Barr and Conley 1996). Similarly, Whelan (1995), in
a study of the work of public safety dispatchers (9-1-1 operators), shows how an
operator taking a call is tightly constrained by the demands of filling out a form on
the computer, while the caller attempts to tell a story about two guys who were
shooting.
Both of these cases represent narratives told across the boundary of institutional
membership: the two interlocutors do not share knowledge and agreement of what is
relevant, what is permitted, and what should be next for a narrative in that context.
Witnesses do not normally know the legal rules governing admissible testimony. The
person calling 9-1-1 does not know what form the operator must fill out, nor does he
or she know that the computer requires him or her to proceed through its fields in